


Behind the Scenes and Other Extras

by Mendeia



Series: The Temple Steps Alight [19]
Category: The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, The Sentinel
Genre: Author Commentary, Gen, Meta, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5601073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendeia/pseuds/Mendeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...Notes, Glossary, History, and Random Musings<br/>(AKA "Where in the world did all of this come from?")</p>
<p>This is all my meta thinking about The Temple Steps Alight, from why I made certain choices to the backstories of some of the bits I threw in.  SO MANY SPOILERS for The Temple Steps Alight.  Okay?  Don't read until you've finished the serious.  Really.</p>
<p>I'm not sure this is really anything anyone wanted, but some of you have really seemed invested in this project, so it seemed like the thing to do to wrap it up with basically a retelling of the footnotes and thought-processes behind it all.  I hope it's worth the read!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind the Scenes and Other Extras

  * Fire



So, what's with all the fire imagery?

It's no accident, obviously, that there's a quote at the head of each full Arc, including the oneshots, that has something to do with fire. At first, when I was writing Arc 1, I wanted that image of the phoenix rising up because that was exactly what was happening to all my major characters: Blair was being reborn as a Guide and a part of SELF complete with a doctorate, Jim was coming to terms with his true nature as a Sentinel, Jonny was becoming a Sentinel and Hadji his Guide, and the Quests were redefining their lives. But even before I finished Arc 1, I was making notes and outlines for the rest of the series (at the time, I thought it would be 3, not 4 Arcs - I was _so annoyed_ when I realized I had too much to do to cram it into just the 3). And...it just became a Thing. I'm not sure it was a conscious decision even if I figured out later why I came to it.

Fire is the element of transformation. It is fire that changes matter to its most basic components and lays a fertile ground for new growth. Fire is what turns a lump of metal into a sword, or a shapeless mass of meat into a meal. We pass through fire in our lives to come out stronger. Fire is also the element of power and courage and passion, all things shared between my major characters, particularly the Sentinels. Fire is the element of the warrior (whereas water is the element of emotion and magic and mystery, and therefore the element of the Guides), and it is also the element of protection. Fire changes and transforms us, teaches us strength and intensity and integrity, and guards and fights for us. It isn't always violent - it could be the candle in the window to lead us home in the dark.

If you look at it the right way, you can see that all of the main characters align to the elements. The Sentinels are mostly fire and the Guides are mainly water. Most everybody else would align to earth - strong and steady and comforting as Simon or Joel or Eric or Race - or air - intellect and curiosity and spontaneity and insight as Benton or Lai or Howard. Though Blair is very air-like himself, as is Hadji in his own way. But when they are Guides, they are definitely water; Kaimi is practically the definition of water. The only really tough pair to figure is Jessie and Daryl. They're both a lot of air and a lot of fire and a lot of earth. And also water because they're both pretty in tune with their emotions. Oh well. Some people are just awesomely well-balanced.

Anyway, themes help me tie things together and also when I get blocked - I tend to ruminate on the broad "meaning of life" stuff when I'm stuck on a plot point. Using fire as a touchstone helped me keep things together and gave me somewhere to grow when I needed inspiration.

 

  * Language, Communication, Communion



The question my beta never asked me as we started in on the first couple chapters of Arc 4 was "What's with all the languages?" because she already knows the answer. However, she thought you might be interested in my perspective. There's an important intersection between language, communication, and communion and I'd like to think I explored it, at least a little, throughout all the Arcs of The Temple Steps Alight.

Language, taken by itself, matters not just in what you say, but in what native tongue and to whom. Personally, I really like languages. I'm fully conversant in Spanish myself (I actually have a minor degree in Spanish language and literature), but I pick up bits and pieces of other languages like some people pick up pennies. I can vaguely translate in Latin, Portuguese, and Italian because of the Latin roots in Spanish. I've sung more music in French than I care to remember, so there are many of those words I recall as well (and, again, the Latin roots; once you start mastering the Romance languages, they all feed one another anyway). Additionally, one of my Clan-sisters is half-German by birth and so is fluent (and when all my college friends took German, I had to learn some words fast or there was no telling what I'd end up agreeing to!). And the more anime I watch, the more Japanese I pick up to the point that I could have a very short conversation if I didn't have to comprehend the grammatical structure; I'm good with nouns and forms of address, though. Also, thanks to a long-term pair of housemates, I've had years of exposure to 2 or 3 different Indonesian dialects and Mandarin Chinese. I know how to listen for tones and how to pick out a language from the shape of the characters in writing.

Canonically for JQ:TRA, it is inevitable that the Quests speak multiple languages. Hadji, for example, must absolutely speak Hindi and Bengali to have survived in the streets of Calcutta. And with all the travel Benton does, plus his excessive brainpower, it's entirely plausible he could pick up languages pretty easily. But also, think through some of those episodes from the series itself. In some cases, the Quests are hanging out in places where you would not expect every shopkeeper and person on the street to speak English well if at all. And yet they communicate just fine. Which tells me that the Quests are all solid polyglots.

Now, add to the bag Jim's knowledge of Chopec which he teaches Jonny in Arc 3 and by Arc 4, after a couple of years all living together, the 8 kids have had a lot of time to trade languages around. I imagine it's a bit like a secret code they develop together. I know my friends and I did. While my college-mates would start jabbering at each other in German, I'd grab the Spanish-speaker and retaliate. And with my housemates, it was worse; Hani and Nick would mix and match English, French, Bali, and Chinese while cooking dinner, trading new words and expanding their vocabulary. There's no way the Chancery crew didn't do the same. Plus, of course, they were hanging out at the lodge a lot of the time with a host of Sentinels who might or might not speak English but probably spoke Russian at least. That invites a lot more learning for everybody.

All that said, I was worried when I posted Arc 1 if anyone would be offended that Jaga doesn't speak perfect English. What I wanted to avoid was the "Tonto Talk" trope. Because ugh. But per the thing about my housemates above, I also lived for 4ish years with a woman whose fourth language was English. Yup. Fourth. First were her native dialects out of Indonesia - of which she knows multiple. Hani is incredibly smart and kind (and cooks the best food ever). But she doesn't have perfect English, even after years of living in an English-speaking country surrounded by English-speakers. She makes little errors - nothing big, but kind of the same ones I make when I try to speak Spanish. While writing Arc 1, I spent a lot of time asking myself what Hani would say and going from there. Her English is better than Jaga's because she practices it more. And I tried to show that language barriers have less than nothing to do with communication barriers or straight-up intelligence. Without the whole "Me Tarzan You Jane" thing.

Because the point of language is communication and, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter which language you choose as long as it works for whoever is attempting to understand and be understood. And not all languages are strictly verbal, either, which is something I think gets repeatedly missed particularly in Sentinel fandom. We worry so much about the actual words said, we miss the dozens of other ways perfectly clear communication is being shared. Jim and Blair do most of their communicating not by speaking directly, but via indirect means, from allegory to sarcasm, from physical comfort to actually staging an argument. Similarly, Jonny and Hadji share a lot of knowing looks, in-jokes, and comforting touches. Race also tends to communicate by touch more than anything else. Just like the toddlers in Arc 4 shout in a spattering of languages, their needs and feelings are understood no matter how they express them. It was my opinion that it was important not just to make SELF and my story pretty international, but also interlingual. Angie communicates by behavior more often than words, really. And Benton does it by work. He doesn't tell Jonny often how much he loves him and is proud of him and will support him - but he built SELF. There is no one right way to communicate, and I think it matters that we remember all the other ways available to us, not only within these stories, but in life.

And that's what brings us to the idea of "communion" as one of the core themes present in TTSA. As said in Madeline L'Engle's A Wind In The Door, "Communication implies sound. Communion doesn't." Because when one heart can commune with another, it doesn't matter how it got there, whether by long, drawn-out conversations, or by perfectly silent gestures, or by a lifetime of shared experiences. When the Sentinels and Guides are united and their strongest, no matter their language or means of communication, they can cut straight to communion. Language is one step towards true communication, which is one step towards true communion, which is the final leap before true connection. And that's why how people speak, and what language, is so important in TTSA. Because Daryl, for example, by picking up the languages in the Chancery, is drawing himself nearer to the others, is binding and connecting them and opening himself to understanding them. It's the one thing everybody works hard to do because it's the only way they can ever really join together into a whole greater than their individual parts.

As Jim says in Arc 1, it's a good thing for him that his partner is a genius who can interpret his own stiff, off-putting language. Because Blair does. And that ability, Blair's innate sense for what Jim really means to share, is what got them so far in the first place and carries them past the point that either needs words anymore.

 

  * Spirit Animals



So, I just want to make this one point in case it went without notice. I've seen some interesting takes on spirit animals throughout the Sentinel fandom. I mean, we all understand that there's something about the jaguar that's specific to Jim and something about the wolf that's meaningful to Blair. I've seen stories where all Guides have canines and all Sentinels have felines, for example. So when my turn came to add some Sentinels to the world, I wanted to invent a consistent methodology for assigning the furry/feathered counterparts.

You'll notice with mine that all the spirit animals are largely native to wherever a person comes from - Hadji's eagle has terrain in India, Angie's beaver is from the Pacific Northwest, etc. And, of course, there are physical/personality characteristics that connect as well. Jonny has the curiosity and intelligence of a fox, and just as much likelihood to get himself into and out of trouble. Ngama may appear to be small and humble, but he's fierce too. Ivanna is all grace backed up with the sharp point of her will. (And you can look up some very disturbing facts about the mating habits of the spirit animals belonging to the Zin daughters having to do with an age of consent that if we were dealing in humans would mean instant prison time. It's _creepy_.)

But the one thing I wanted to add to the fandom was my idea that Guides always have spirit animals that bond for life. The wolf, the eagle, Kaimi's albatross. These are animals which will choose a mate and keep to them for the whole of a lifetime. Because it is the Guides who carry the more powerful Seventh that will bond them to the Sentinel. Which isn't to say the Sentinels won't be faithful. Just that the Sentinel's focus is outward, and the Guide's focus is always to the Sentinel. It was neat. I was proud of it. Now you know.

 

  * Bandit



I'm going to start off with this: I do not hate all dogs. I don't even hate most dogs.

But I do hate Bandit.

Part of it is that the original JQ and JQ:TRA can't seem to decide how smart Bandit is and the inconsistency drives me crazy - is he monkey-smart? Human-smart? Or is he level-of-sod-on-a-dry-day-smart? You can find the evidence for all 3 if you go looking. And I'm a huge believer in not giving dogs or pets in general more agency than they deserve. No, I'm sorry. Bandit _cannot_ wriggle free from the diabolical trap, climb on the control panel, and push the right lever _on command_. Most toddlers can't do that. I have some _coworkers_ who can't do that. So I try to keep Bandit within the realm of realistic puppy intelligence.

That's not why I hate him, not exactly. That's just why I get frustrated with him in the canon.

I hate him because he's _always there_. He's _always_ there! Go watch those shows again. He's almost always underfoot. And not usually advancing any kind of plot without dipping back into genius-dog levels of intelligence.

Which meant I had to have a reason for him to be in every single scene or else I had to put him somewhere. Which meant I was thinking about Bandit _all the time_. Not characterizations, not the long-term arc for the plot, but where the hell is Bandit this time and what is he doing and do I have to care? Arc 1 was easier - the Quests spent a huge portion of it in Borneo. Same with Arc 3 and the Arctic installation. But for Arc 2 and Arc 4, I had to keep remembering Bandit so I could put him somewhere without, you know, leaving him at the pound. You'll notice Bandit spends virtually all of Arc 4 wherever the action _isn't_. He's a nice enough dog - he probably keeps Melly and Angie wonderful company. As long as it's off-screen.

 

  * Why Is There No Sex In This Story?



Okay. I'm just gonna put it out there. Why didn't I write Jim/Blair as, you know, Jim-slash-Blair? Particularly since I made absolutely no bones about getting other people together (Daryl/Jessie, Ngama/Kaimi, Eric/Chris, and Angie/Melly). This answer has two parts. There's the part about why I didn't make Jim/Blair explicitly a pairing, and then there's a part about, you know, actual sex.

On the sex part, here's the simple answer: I didn't feel it was necessary. Part of it is that the relationship was strong and didn't need a carnal aspect in my opinion (and this is coming from a person who has read more PWP porn-fic than you can shake a handful of sticks at). This story was already about so many things - did it need to be about sex? Did it need sex to move it along? Or would it just gum up the works and keep me from getting where I was really trying to go? Also, I've never ever been comfortable writing explicit scenes or even implicit ones. I think they all sound funny when I write them, and you can tell they bug me because you can scour every piece of everything I've ever published and you won't find more than kissing - and rather little of that. So that was a factor, too.

I can tell you that if you take the scene from Arc 2 between Jim and Blair when they affirm (reaffirm?) their bond and everything between them changes - which, incidentally, lays the groundwork for most of Blair's actions in Arcs 3 and 4 - change just a few words and names, and swap out the spirit animals, you get something like my actual marriage. She is the air I breathe and the heart that beats inside me. And I knew it, I knew it the first time I ever heard her laugh that something in me belonged only to her and I could never want anyone else the same way again. She drives me crazy and I regularly want to strangle her with her computer-mouse cord, but she fills my heart with light and joy every single day. So, putting Jim and Blair - and everybody else I paired off - into a relationship that profound and deep wasn't hard. What makes this whole thing a little unusual is the lack of actual sex and the lack of, you know, the "we're basically married" talk.

In Sentinel fanfic in particular, there's kind of two ways of going about a relationship of this depth - either Jim/Blair are explicitly in love and having sex and in a relationship, or they're bound brothers "basically married" to one another. And in the latter case, there are very, very few stories that don't at some point directly state "You know, man, we're pretty much married now / Yup" or else "Jim, you've been effectively married to Sandburg for years now" or something. And I didn't want to do that. It didn't need to be said.

Sometimes, when something is that real, it doesn't need to be stated.

As far as TTSA goes, the bond between Sentinels/Guides is so strong that they simply _are_. They aren't "practically married." They're beyond married. They aren't "brothers." They're beyond brothers. There isn't a word in the English language for it. Soul-mates is close, but even that implies a romantic aspect. In the case of Ngama and Kaimi (and later Angie and Melly), I made it explicit that their romantic connection is in addition to, or maybe even _in spite of_ , their status as bound Sentinel/Guide. Jim and Blair can use words for each other like "friend," "roommate," "partner," and "brother," but what they are to one another surpasses all those things as the rain-forest surpasses a paper cup. They are still friends and roommates and partners and brothers. All those things are true. But they are something else, too. Something with no words. Something with no understanding save for those inside it.

Jim and Blair - and all the other Sentinel/Guide pairs - are bound in ways that stagger the imagination and can only be real in the heart. And, as with all such things, the only way to understand them is to feel them. There aren't words. So I didn't give them any.

Gosh I hope that makes sense.

 

  * Inspiration For Agent Howard Fritz



Here's one that would make my beta sad if I failed to include it.

Agent Howard Fritz started off as the sort of bland, benevolent agent who could be assured to smooth things over on an official level as the adventures got bigger and tougher. (Also, any resemblance to the evolution of the character of Phil Coulson from the first "Iron Man" to his badassery in "Agents of SHIELD" is totally a coincidence and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) But it quickly became apparent to me that he had his own game to play - all of spycraft is that way. It's a house of mirrors and you never can tell if what you see is the truth, a reflection, a distortion, or just yourself. Which might be why I didn't go into governmental service.

But anyway.

When Howard Fritz began, he was based in character on a person I actually know who did go into spywork, and named after the character Fritz Howard from the TV show The Closer (which is an awesome and fun show and you should give it a shot). My beta LOOOOOVES The Closer so much. So it was a natural fit.

But over time, Howard Fritz became sort of the last piece of the puzzle, didn't he? Even as a sworn agent of the US government, he was still looking at the world with a broader perspective, with the eyes of a man out for the greatest good for all working inside a system that sometimes forgets about that part. As much as Race Bannon protected the Quest family from danger, Howard Fritz was out there protecting SELF from any interests that would not serve it well. Which is why, of course, in the end he becomes a full member of the Tribe. And which is also why he finds a way to bridge the gap from the DHS to the UN and eventually wins for SELF international accreditation and status. Howard Fritz was the human force behind the machinations of the system, and those human forces can, if they know what they're doing, prove that the system is just that - and it can be used by whoever has the knowledge and skill. Did it mean the government was on SELF's side? Not really. It didn't mean anything like that. Howard Fritz isn't the government, wasn't the government. He was himself, a player in the game. But as that player, he could influence the final score, which is what he set out to do.

(That sneaking thing, though, and the mild-mannered I'm-no-threat-here thing, yeah, that's pure Phil Coulson. What can I say?)

 

  * Otto Baun's Maps



Just a little simple one here. My beta is the nerdiest of history nerds. She runs a weekly WWI campaign in our dining room with a table full of boys reenacting the adventures of a specific Canadian squad in the European Theater via storytelling and table-top role-playing. And if you dare venture into the room on a Sunday when the game is in full swing, the table and sometimes every available surface are strewn with maps and pictures and diagrams and photocopies of telegrams and orders from the Front and everything else. The players are as buried in maps as the characters are in mud a lot of the time. So when I needed a striking visual for Otto's room (and some of his character), I remembered the latest Sunday adventure in the trenches and pulled it forward.

(P.S. Otto Baun would totally have been welcome at the table. My beta always needs more history nerds around to help her keep her facts, and her maps, in order!)

 

  * Jessie, Daryl, Marc, Arc 3, And Consent



Let's talk about the issue of consent for a little bit.

Now, one thing The Sentinel fandom has is a very _interesting_ relationship with is consent. I mean, we run the gamut, don't we? There are plenty of stories where even taking a decision out of one's hands is a major problem (see Jim deciding for Blair that the latter shouldn't be a cop or something), but then we've also got the whole GDP universe (which, full disclosure, I love the stories even if they make me really uncomfortable sometimes) that kind of smashes through any reasonable basis for consent and goes straight to slavery and dehumanizing as a, um, almost expected measure of relating and maintaining a relationship (as in when Blair has to crawl in order to help him something-something establish control over Jim by appealing to his sense of dominance). And all that before we get into the sheer preponderance of rape-fic. Whoo.

(I do not want to start the moral argument about whether or not the GDP-verse or any rape-fic is good or bad. It just serves as an example.)

Thankfully, most people who ever read TTSA will not be faced with such blatant dehumanizing behavior or slavery (or, I hope and pray, rape). But the subtle nuances of consent and rape culture are all around us every day. How many times has a highly-publicized case of sexual assault resulted in headlines about what the victim wore or how people "cry rape" or something? How many times as a society do we mock women who are comfortable wanting sex from multiple sources, and how quick are we to shame them as "sluts" rather than shrug at them as we would men who are similarly inclined? How often do we swoon at the "passion" in movies or TV shows where one person is kissed or embraced by another without permission? (I'm thinking here of that first kiss in "The Mask of Zorro" between Anthony Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones when they're sword-fighting in the barn. It's hot, don't get me wrong, but it was not consensual)

Fair warning: I have really, really strong opinions on matters like these. It was almost impossible for me not to address them somewhere.

Given that it would be super easy for me to have totally knocked all of Arc 3 off track, I tried to stick to a simple pair of scenes with Jessie as our heroine. On the one hand, we've got Marc, Daryl's roommate. Now, is Marc a bad, vile guy, a budding rapist, a total misogynist? Well, probably not, no. He's just clueless, arrogant, and a little too interested in spending time between the sheets. He's not evil. But that doesn't stop him from physically pushing into Jessie's space, putting his hands on her person, and generally taking actions that some might find sexy and enticing but, to others, might be intimidating or aggressive. Jessie, however, is not easily intimidated and she's a hell of a lot more aggressive than Marc. In the first scene when she meets him at Daryl's dorm room, she clearly establishes her boundaries, removes herself from the situation, and has no difficulty ensuring her physical and emotional security. When Marc comes back at the end of Arc 3 and goes a little too far, Jessie makes good on her threats to defend herself and again asserts her right not to be pawed at or held or touched against her will, without really hurting Marc or losing one inch of her own sense of integrity, personhood, or worth.

It BLOWS MY MIND YOU GUYS that there are people in the world who would call that behavior she confidently and rightly employs "being a bitch" or some such thing. It BLOWS MY MIND. And it makes me want to introduce them to my own brand of self-assertion. But that's neither here nor there.

The fact is that I believe consent is very important - not just within a relationship, but in general. You don't touch someone without taking the time to ensure touch is welcome, if not verbally, than by every other means and language at your disposal. You don't come on to someone who has made it clear your brand of attention is unwelcome. And you don't ever, ever blame someone for possessing the self-respect and confidence and courage to assert their right to personhood free from interference. As they say at conventions, "Cosplay is not consent." The fact that a person dresses up in a skimpy, revealing costume does not equate that they want to be touched or leered at or approached suggestively and it does not give any rights to anyone else to attempt those things.

The problem is that not everyone knows how to handle a situation, either from being on the receiving end or from being a witness as Daryl was. Just because Jessie was totally able to handle herself without fear, able to brush off Marc's behavior, enforce her rights, and get on with her day doesn't mean anyone else has the same skills or practice or fortitude or clarity of thought. And Daryl was more in that position - he wanted to help Jessie, wanted to support her and her right to be free from Marc's attentions, but he didn't want to belittle her or imply that he didn't have confidence in her own strength.

And there's no good single answer to that problem. Which is why she gave Daryl the answer she did. In my opinion, if someone looks uncomfortable with the situation they are in, it's my belief that a bystander who wants to help should ask first. And if there isn't time to ask, well, that probably means intervention wouldn't go amiss even if it isn't strictly necessary.

But the point of that scene and that interaction was that I wanted to show how consent looks when we aren't romanticizing it perhaps a little too far. I could never read bodice-rippers where the girl gets "ravished" and it's a sensual pleasure. UM NO THANK YOU. I think it serves us all well to have some examples of consent, not just when it is abridged, but when it is enforced with courage and competence. Jessie had the right to say yes or no to anything Marc wanted. She chose to go with "no" and backed it up when the blockhead didn't accept her clear signals. But that doesn't mean Jessie is a bitch, nor that she isn't open to touching or something. She was fine with Daryl, of course.

I think, particularly in The Sentinel fandom where we have a strong theme of bonding and sometimes it isn't exactly wanted on one or either side, it doesn't hurt to remind people that boundaries are important and, as hot and heavy as it might be to ignore them for a moment of passion, the greater strength is in affirmatively controlling and acting on one's choices without fear of reprisal.

 

  * Alex Barnes And Sentinel Sickness



Okay. Here's another heavy-ish topic: S2P1 and S2P2.

They are awesome episodes. They really are. But I think they leave more questions than they answer. Fanon has done an amazing job of trying to fill in gaps in just about every way possible. But the one that bugged me, the one that never did make any sort of sense, was Jim's treatment of Blair which got worse as his attraction to Alex grew. Even some of the best Sentinel fic authors out there haven't totally got a good method of explaining what happened there. What was _up_ with the magnetism? Why should it cause Blair to be cast aside? And after Alex kills Blair, why is Jim _still_ so drawn to her almost against his will? (Other than the obvious - if either Jeri Ryan or Richard Burgi were coming on to you, wouldn't you at least consider giving it a go? I think so.)

At the time, Alex talks about feeling a "connection" between herself and Jim. And, okay, you can't deny - it sure _sounds_ like mating, doesn't it? All her "what we could be together" talk? But why should it happen at all? Is it a universal thing that all Sentinels have this ridiculous urge to get naked with one another? Somehow, I don't think that's really very likely. Besides, it seems like that would have been a really, really useful tidbit for Sir Burton to have included in his monograph so it shouldn't come as such an awkward surprise to everyone.

Plus, Alex had that spotted jaguar. So, either all Sentinels have jaguars, which seemed stupid (how would a Sentinel in sub-Saharan Africa know what it was - wouldn't they be more likely to have a leopard or some other local creature?) or it was one weird coincidence that Alex had one just like Jim.

Thus was born my explanation of "Sentinel sickness." This is the Sandburg Zone, after all. What if Jim just had the bad luck to stumble upon the _one_ Sentinel out there with the same spirit animal? What if that - not the mere fact that Alex was also a Sentinel - was at the root of his behavior? What if sharing a spirit animal was what initiated the slow build-up of Jim's increasingly erratic behavior? Not the presence of another Sentinel in his territory - otherwise, a Sentinel having a Sentinel kid would be pretty tough and, genetically-speaking, rare and important traits don't usually preclude having a parent around to raise and hone them. There's no sense in having it so that Sentinels can't share territory or no kids could be born of Sentinels. So, by that logic, what happened between Jim and Alex was an aberration.

And if you assume that Sentinels don't always breed true, then maybe this profound attraction actually is useful in some way - otherwise, again, it would have been naturally selected out. So we have a weird situation that is both natural and necessary. It can only come down to propagation of the species. Sentinels who get caught up in Sentinel sickness are driven by instincts they cannot ignore to mate - to absolutely ensure their Sentinel genes reach the next generation. And it would explain everything. Not only would Jim's behavior to Blair be explicable in him rightly freaking out at his traitorous instincts, but he would also need to be separated from his Guide in order to ensure the Sentinel connection was complete on a spiritual level. Jim would be unable to let harm come to the Sentinel who would be mother of his child, no matter his better judgment. And when it was over, well, then he'd be back to himself, albeit shaken by the entire situation.

When I added the idea of a Sixth and Seventh to the mythology, this just completed the explanation. Alex, a Sentinel without a Seventh, simply couldn't handle the pools in the Mexican Temple, nor could she consummate the bond with Jim (who has a very powerful Seventh). Both drove her the way Hadji almost went, lost within herself beyond the Seventh Door, though not so completely. If she had survived attempting to bond with Jim, they could have produced a Sentinel kid. But she couldn't take it even before the sex got going. And, let's face it, she wasn't exactly in spiritual harmony to start with. It's my opinion that a Sentinel without a Seventh could normally survive the experience - as long as their mind was open and prepared and their soul was strong enough to handle the connection. But Alex just wasn't cut out for it.

Ironically, Blair himself could have helped her, but he was unaware of his own powers at the time. And she tried to kill him (which allowed him and Jim to bond in the first place - yay!). It's just as well. However he would have chosen - to help her and ensure the consummation and creation of a child or to deny her and let her die - would probably have broken him.

Rule number one. Don't hurt the Guide. Alex broke it, and she paid for it, even if no one knew why at the time.

 

  * Race & Blair's Lists And Notes



So, as I think I've mentioned before, I keep a Twitter account. I also keep an ancient Livejournal. And I keep lists. Skies above do I ever keep lists. Everything that needs doing around the house, long-term plans, short-term things to remember - you name it, I write it down. So it wasn't hard to pawn that particular habit off onto Blair who, as an academic, is even more likely than I am to write down everything he needs to remember and everything that happens. Blair needs a written record, I think; note-taking would be habit unto compulsion after all that schooling and field study. Blair needs to keep a running measure of his life, of what he does and why, of what happens to him and what that engenders later. It's a good way to learn about oneself, to write it all down, because from there you can look back and see with clearer eyes what you missed. But I didn't have it in me to write a journal entry or an entire chapter of conclusions Blair has captured about his own life (and it's been done better than I could by other fic writers), so that leaves him with one of the lists you can just imagine is siting on the edge of his desk in the loft where he makes notes to himself and, sometimes, makes himself laugh as in "The Sandburg Zone" oneshot.

But I like the idea of Race also keeping lists, albeit of a different sort. That's why he's got the goofy ones in the "Lists" oneshot. Because I can tell you off the top of my head the different weird faces my beta makes (she has one specific to discussing The Ohio State University's hated football rival), the different sorts of ways I have of using the word "fine" to signify my well-being or less-than-well-being, the different awkward lead-ins from one particular friend when she wants to talk about uncomfortable subjects, etc.

Blair is a student and teacher and researcher, so that means notes. Race, well, first of all, he probably gets bored like I do, and more importantly, notices EVERYTHING. He's a bodyguard; it's in his job description. And when it comes to the people he loves, he notices more than anyone ever realizes.

(By the way, I need to give a shout-out here. 'NIFRJI' is actually a word made up between myself and my buddy/co-data analyst at work. We both had a regular need to ask for information from colleagues and rarely wanted commentary or feedback beyond what we had specifically requested. Sometimes spreadsheets will suffice and people's tender feelings about the numbers or alternate interpretations of them are...slightly annoying. I'm just sayin.')

Anyway, since neither of them have a Twitter account to capture their goofy one-liners the way I do, they have to write them down somewhere. (If you wish to follow mine, I'm Mendeia there as most other places online. Welcome! Let me know who you are and how you found me and I'll definitely follow you back!)

 

  * Angie And Melly



Angie and Melly came into being partly by accident. Some of it was my desire to introduce a few neuro-atypical characters. My beta is neuro-atypical, and depending on how you define me, I could be considered as such as well. And, especially after what Jessie said way back in Arc 1 about Sentinels being confused for autistics, well, it just needed to happen.

No one, not even me, knows how Angie came to be the way she is. Is she sensitive to touch and other sensory overload because of being a Sentinel? Because of her autism? Because one made the other harder to cope with until the behaviors were ingrained? And for that matter, how much of her awkwardness is true autism, how much is a lifetime of being _treated_ as someone neuro-atypical, and how much is just her natural personality? You can't even begin to draw lines here. There aren't things to draw lines _around_ , just as it is in real life. She's just who she is and it doesn't matter from whence it came. It's sort of nice that The Sentinel works well as a model for handling autism and other neuro-atypical perspectives, actually.

For Melly, I also wanted to highlight some other things that might be termed "disabilities" but aren't in any way connected to Melly being unable to help. Just because she has to approach her life differently doesn't mean she can't be just as effective a Guide and partner and member of the Tribe. And it's important, I think, to get more people with different lives into stories. By some definitions, I myself am bipolar, but by others I am not (I'm somewhere in the Bipolar II definition, but it, like autism, is a spectrum of manifestations), and really? It matters for me and in my life, and it should be known, but it also doesn't matter all that much most of the time. Melly might have periods she's more easily upset or frustrated, periods she's on a fierce, powerful high, but they don't change who she is or what she can do with her life.

On the other side, I will confess, however, that while I am totally happy and comfortable putting a diabetic into my story, there's a cowardly reason I never showed her actively managing her diabetes, via medical means: I have a SERIOUS phobia about needles. It's debilitating. I couldn't avoid injections in Arc 1 and Arc 4 just because it's totally implausible that Sentinel drugs could be administered in a pill or something. But...uuuuueeeeerrrrggghhhh. I barely got through even writing those references. I have total respect for people dealing with diabetes who have to control it with injections. Me? Me it would kill. I have one fatal allergy already and carry an epinephrine injector for safety. And you know what? If I ever had to use it, I'd probably die before I could get up the courage to stick that thing in my leg. This is why everyone around me knows how to use it and has standing permission to stab me in the thigh with it if it means saving my life.

Anyway, Rafe and Henri needed someone to connect them to the world of Sentinels, needed more in the story than to be the background detectives of the department, and I really wanted to have a few more kinds of people in my story. It worked out for everybody. And, frankly, I think it makes both Rafe and Henri way more awesome. No wonder they're cool with Sentinels. They've had years (and in the case of Rafe, a lifetime) looking at neuro-atypical Angie and Melly and seeing good, smart, brave young women. They're solid neuro-typical allies and I was proud to give them that.

 

  * Parent Problems (And Ngama & Blair)



Parental relationships are interesting enough across both series in general before you get into the specifics of TTSA. From The Sentinel we've got Simon, who is, let's be honest here, a really good dad to Daryl. We've got Jim whose own dad and brother are...problematic. We've got Blair, whose mom is both more and less of a problem, depending. And then with JQ:TRA we've got the Quests and their sort of unconventional arrangement, but it, at least, is fully supportive and engaged and loving. And that's before I started adding other characters, other families like Brian and Henri with the girls, other situations.

I've been on the side of rejection like what happens to Ngama. I've also been embraced by an alternate family as Blair is by the Quests, as Ngama is by Leilani. And I've had to consider distancing myself from blood-family because they simply could not be trusted not to intentionally or accidentally cause pain to more than just myself.

So when my beta innocently asked me if Naomi was going to be in my stories, I had to stop for a while. I had to think about it just the way Blair did. And I reached the same conclusion for him that I have in my real life, which is that Naomi means well. But in this case, "means well" doesn't and cannot equate to "is welcome to access everything." I don't think Naomi is a bad person. But I think Naomi's perspective makes her blind to the real needs of her son sometimes. I think she can't see beyond her own assumptions and fears and her own worldview. She is a tough, loving, kind woman and a very good mother. But that doesn't mean she wouldn't also lead a massively loud protest in Red Square about the state of Sentinels if she knew about them. And that, while good in so many ways, would be the wrong choice. Blair cannot ask his mom not to be who she is. Naomi is Naomi. All Blair can do is decide how much of himself Naomi gets. It's a loss, a real one, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.

For Ngama, well, I think being a Sentinel is a nice allegory for being either neuro-atypical or for being gay. And neither are always met with open arms even from the most intelligent and rational of people. There will always be those who want to see you fitting into a box, whether or not you ever agreed to be boxed, and who will cut their own ties with you rather than challenge their assumptions. But it also has its own purpose in another way. Some people grow beyond such reactionary derision and blatant unkindness and find greater acceptance and love in themselves. But even when they don't, I think rejection is one of the harshest teachers out there for imbuing a person with their own inner strength and independence. Not everybody makes it all the way to that lesson, unfortunately, and not everybody gets the chance. But honestly? Ngama's father's rejection was the exact catalyst he needed to push him from his comfort zone, to send him seeking others more like himself, who would help him find his way to the person he wanted to become. Had Tigari not driven Ngama away, Ngama might never have sought out Cascade.

From our greatest tragedies and losses sometimes come our most important lessons. We learn through pain and hurt. We refine ourselves through struggle and anguish and loneliness and mistrust. Blair's mom taught him many things, but I think the lesson she taught him more than anything else in the end is that he must choose wisely whom to trust with his heart and soul. Good thing he has Jim. And for Ngama, I think he learned from his father to stand on his own feet and never apologize for who and what he is.

They are painful, hard-fought lessons. I've been there too. And, frankly, I wouldn't have been here to write TTSA at all without them.

 

  * Real Lessons 1 And 2



Speaking of lessons...

Okay, so, as I put in the oneshots, the "Lessons from Race" and "Lessons from Jim" stuff is real. You have to understand, I am the most paranoid person you'll ever meet when it comes to disaster preparedness. I think I learned this trait while studying to potentially work for the government under a former NSA-agent. It means I always spot 2-4 ways out of any room/building. It means I am hyper aware of my environment and who is near me. It means I am observant beyond what most people ever realize. Like Jim says, my brain is forever assessing and dismissing various things, making note of others, monitoring my surroundings, and looking for threats. (For a great depiction of the training to get you to this point, go watch the movie "Spy Game" with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. That's actually how the CIA does it.)

It's something I've talked about a lot with various friends because there are situations that happen in real life all too often these days. And I already know what I'd do, or what I'd try to do, in scenarios ranging from house fire to terrorist gunmen to zombie attack, but I want the people I care about to be prepared as well. So, now and again, I give lessons. Not, you know, lecturing. I'm not that good of a teacher, I don't think. But sometimes we discuss these things and I set out my plans and reasons and conclusions. And I help the others find their own ways of making preparations or considering options.

So when I did the Lessons oneshots, I tried to make them as real as possible. I tried, clumsily, probably, to describe how I configured my own brain and awareness to be so hyper vigilant. To talk through what the BBC TV show "Sherlock" (another awesome series and fandom) calls the difference between "seeing" and "observing." What Jim describes is very much how cops and also people in positions like security guards and undercover agents and even salespeople read the world, even if they don't all know they're doing it. Every blade of grass, every quiver of sound in the air, all of it tells you something. You can, with practice, take it in and understand it. And particularly if you're of a nervous disposition, being able to really keep up awareness of your surroundings is a great comfort. When you know every sound your house makes every hour of the day, you can, even half-asleep, confirm for yourself that the weird click you heard was the refrigerator and not a burglar and you don't have to be afraid. Observation and deduction and awareness make the world richer and less intimidating, at least in my opinion.

On the one about being abducted, well, there are some rough truths out there. If you are abducted, your chances of survival are questionable to begin with. Really, the best you can hope for is to leave behind enough clues for someone to find and convict your murderer. And depending on your situation, you can humanize yourself to your abductor and gain sympathy which might buy you time; being a good hostage can save your life, if your abductor has any inkling of humanity left to make them wish to keep you alive. But there are other things to be aware of. Things people don't recognize - like how easy it would be in a true emergency to get out of an office building, or at least hide where you couldn't be found. Like how few people look up while searching, or how many make assumptions about where you might choose to hide. Like how lack of karate training does not equal lack of ability to fight back.

But the biggest point that matters in both has to do with attitude and choice. Even abducted, if you choose to fight, to live, to leave evidence of your passing, you have something. You must believe there is hope, believe you will be found, even if you don't have an army of Sentinels coming after you. When you observe, your focus and interest and desire to pay attention will bring the world to life around you, will give you every advantage over whatever is about to happen. You must maintain enough self-awareness to be able to judge when to carefully remind a captor of your human dignity and when to simply acquiesce to prevent injury or worse. When you can see that the person down that alleyway is clearly dangerous, you may be able to engineer an escape before things get worse. And if you cannot, if you keep your head and resist with your soul, even if you don't emerge alive, your struggle to live will help whoever you leave behind. Neither may be enough to save a life, but then, who knows? May you never find out. I truly pray you never find out.

But if they help, if they give you one tiny advantage at a critical moment, then I hope you know that these are the best I can give you to protect and help you.

 

  * Jessie's Sports



Time for something lighter.

I was born and raised in a sports family. My parents both did basketball - and they were tall enough to play it well all through college. My brother showed an early interest in hockey, which led to my father spending 20 years as a small-town hockey coach to dozens of different kids. My mom, in solidarity, joined a league for women (and hockey moms) and kicked ass at it until her knees gave out. My brother coaches high school hockey now and also still plays year round - ice hockey fall-to-spring and floor-hockey all summer. My dad is also a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan, my grandfather was a huge Notre Dame fan (particularly basketball), and football is the thing that happens every Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve and any other day there's nothing else on. Except when there is NHL hockey. AND THERE SHOULD ALWAYS BE HOCKEY.

I was born and raised a Buffalo Sabres fan and it is like a religion where I grew up. They are my truest first love of any and all sports.

Now, when I was a kid, this kind of physicality was like another planet to me. I was awkward. Uncoordinated. Physically challenged by breathing problems. Yeah, I was _that_ kid. I was the kid who couldn't run the mile - who literally still can't run a whole mile - and sat on the sidelines a lot. The kid who never did learn to skate. But I still inherited a love of sports in my own way. I was badass at indoor soccer for gym class when there were just 10 of us and I was the only girl (memorably, the guys were afraid to "get rough" with me; I was NOT afraid to do the same to them, which won me some excellent respect). What I lacked in traditional athleticism I made up in grit, drive, and, uh, a non-girlish body-type. I'm uncommonly strong for my size, and twice as enduring. But that didn't make me any _good_ at any of it (though I am a passable rock/indoor wall-climber and swimmer now due to that same stubbornness and strength).

My love for sports came, in the end, less from my ability to participate and more from my love of those who did. I learned everything there was to know about hockey so I could cheer on my brother. This served me well as my devotion to the Buffalo Sabres grew over the years. I watched every Olympics and developed favorites and loyalties from the stories and struggles that brought the athletes so far. And when I met my beta, the world's most ardent Ohio State football fan you have ever, and I mean _ever_ met, I jumped into that world, too. I never developed a love for basketball or baseball, golf bores me, and tennis drives me crazy. But give me hockey, football (college-only; we have _issues_ with the NFL), rugby, anything you might see in either a Summer or Winter Olympics, and I am _there_.

And sports happens in my house a lot.

Saturdays, particularly in the fall when OSU football is going, are all sports all the time. My beta and I plan our whole day around it. We stock up on cheese and snacks and get up for the first games of the day and take our places on the couch together. We always have favorites and preferences. Big 10 over SEC. Underdogs forever. And we hate a certain State Up North no matter who they play - it's in the OSU blood. We'll watch game after game after game, flipping between 2 or 3 match-ups and cheering and yelling and monitoring snarky game-related Twitter feeds and forgetting for an entire day that we are even remotely adults with responsibilities. We do it during the NHL playoffs and the Olympics, too. I will never quite remember _why_ we throw socks at French Alpine skiers, _why_ we like Sweden for hockey better than Canada, _why_ we cheer for the Japanese gymnasts, _why_ we boo at all badminton just universally - they're all traditions and in-jokes that have developed from 15 years of sharing them.

But those sports days? They are magical. The phone turns off and the email goes away (except when I owe chapters of fic to you all!). We don't have to talk to other people or run errands unless we run out of food. We ride the highs and lows of the games and the stories of the athletes and we just...bask in it. And it is restful. It gets me through what is always a very stressful fall-into-winter season. And no matter how bad our OSU football has been, no matter how awful my poor, poor, wonderfully sad Buffalo Sabres are (I really do bleed blue and gold for them and have since I was old enough to read the scores), we love our teams. We love our sports and our games. We love our coaches and our fan-bases.

And we love, we _love_ our days on the couch with cheese and cookies and no future and no past but the exploits before us and the warm, easy comfort between us.

It seemed like the kind of thing Jessie would appreciate, too.

So, as to her team affiliations:

Ohio State = explained above

Cascade Jags = duh

Buffalo Sabres = I will die with the Sabres in my heart

New Zealand All Blacks = I spent some time in Australia and New Zealand and, what can I say? The Kiwis converted me

Manchester United = a friend in college was _unreal_ in his devotion

But I left you a lot of room to add your own preferences,too. For sports and athletes, feel free to plug in your favorites for Jessie. She's an open-minded girl and she'll root for whomever fills your heart the most!

 

  * The Chancery Bulletin-Board and Whiteboard of DOOM



Another excellent and epic true story. When I was in college with the crew that has since become my family (and my beta, of course), we all had whiteboards on our dorm-room doors so we could leave notes for one another. It was a good way of keeping track of who had already gone to dinner and which people wanted to hang out for a weekend in town and stuff like that in the age before cell phones. And, well...notes turned into nonsense a lot of the time. Usually my fault, actually - I'm the most impish of the group with an occasional side of manic humor. I did once write out the entire "There's a hole in my bucket" song on my whiteboard as a way of letting people know I was working on an essay. And if I couldn't sleep (which happened a lot, and still does), I'd go around in the middle of the night and write random things on their whiteboards or draw pictures or something. We also had quote boards. Lots of 'em. Heck, I still use Twitter almost exclusively as my ongoing quote board. And yes, the one-liners are sometimes amazing.

But during my senior year, I lived in the world's tiniest 3-bedroom apartment (seriously, under 600 square feet) with my beta and my 2 closest friends (and we're still Clan-sisters; by some miracle, this did not make us hate each other permanently, but it was a near thing). We had our own Whiteboard of Doom where we'd track food expenses and bills and such. So, if I went to the grocery store and bought bread, I'd go home and add a line on the board under each person's name for 25% of whatever the bread cost me that they would owe me. We kept it down to the penny. For months. And, yeah, sometimes we bartered services. I think my beta traded a month of kitchen clean-up duty to one of the others for keeping track of her receipts for her. And we did end up having arguments about who used how much ketchup and was a broken pot everybody's fault or just the person who broke it? It was insane.

To this day, you can get smacked by my friends if you remind them of keeping track of money on the Whiteboard of Doom in our little apartment. And you can get one of my friends to blush if you remind him of the "After Dark" commentary we left on his dorm-room door a couple of times.

Sometimes I wonder if the age of social media and smartphones has robbed people of the joys of hilarious note-leaving, and then I remember Twitter and I feel better. Because the laughter hasn't gone, even if it's digital now. And that's all that really matters, right?

 

  * Accidental (And Rainy) Graduations



Okay. So, this is a two-part story. The first is the bit in "A Day In The Life" where Hadji accidentally graduated from college early and didn't realize it. That...actually happened.

Uh, to me. No, really. It did.

I went to a college that has trimesters instead of semesters, and in the middle of the second trimester of my senior year, my advisor and I realized that once I submitted my senior comprehensive thesis to him and got it approved, I'd have amassed more than enough credits to graduate. I'd already completed all my objectives and I'd come into college with a truckload of credits from high school and placement tests, so, yeah. I went to dinner that night and realized I could graduate a term early - on accident. So I did. I used the last trimester to get a job. My friends mostly laughed at me. Because I'm the only person we know who could _accidentally_ graduate early. Actually I'm "the only person we know who could" a lot of things. But those are other stories.

As for the rainy graduation, well, I did show up in June to march with my class and get my diploma even though I'd been out of school for a term. And it rained. It rained so heavily that mine became the first ever graduation held in the brand new Rec Center. It was _dismal_. And, yes, the building made weird noises at inappropriate times. Also, I spent the 2 hours lined up waiting to walk in trapped in a weight room. You know what? Don't ever leave several hundred students who are supposed to be waiting in line alone in a weight room for 2 hours. It was at least as bad as you imagine. At least nobody broke any bones, but I won't say anything about ripped robes or, uh, misused equipment.

But that was not the end of my rainy graduation tales. Oh, no. A few years later, my beta and I traveled to see her sister graduate and it was _so much worse_. The whole ruined-programs thing? Check. (We were cemented to our seats by the sodden mess.) So many umbrellas and so many sound issues you couldn't hear anything back just 10ish rows? Check. My beta and I giving up entirely on paying any sort of attention and instead giggling like fiends? Check. Dorm room garbage bags converted into really ugly ponchos? Check. The worst part was, after 2 or more hours of it, the administrators _finally_ decided that, oh, rain isn't a problem but lightning is _bad_ so let's move this inside now. So we had to troop in a crowd of thousands of annoyed, wet parents (getting stabbed by umbrellas) into their Rec Center to set up and start _all over_. Longest. Graduation. Ceremony. Ever.

 

  * Why The Cascade Science Museum? And Who Is Cat?



This one's easy.

I've lived in Minnesota consistently since the early 2000's. The Science Museum of Minnesota is the one I know the best - it's where we go! And my beta has a friend who worked there named Cat with whom we hang sometimes (and see regularly at CONvergence). Cat is also a really kind reader of a lot of my stuff and gives me serious encouragement when I am nervous about things.  When I needed a good public building for the showdown in Arc 4, the Science Museum of Minnesota was the obvious choice. The actual layout of the place is very complicated and rather like what I described (although it was never a theater to my knowledge), there was lots of room for trouble, and, yeah, okay, I'll admit it - that thing with dinosaurs creeping the Guides out? That happens to me. No, seriously, it does. My beta will attest to it. When we saw the most recent dinosaur exhibit at the SMM, I walked out of the hall shaking _so_ hard with goosebumps on my goosebumps on my goosebumps.

Anyway, Cat and the Cascade Science Museum are all directly pulled from Saint Paul, MN. Make sure you visit if you ever stop by!

 

  * Doctor Zin: A Supervillain's Motives Always Matter



Have you ever sat down and looked at the stories of good-versus-evil and really thought about the evil? Ever gone through the links on and really looked at the villains in that light? Now, there are great villains out there in the collective creativity of literature and media. But some of them are...stupid. No, really. And not stupid like useless or bumbling or lacking in intelligence. Any villain who ever declared they wanted to "take over the world" is immediately suspect. Because, well, _why_? What's the point in taking over the world? What does that get you besides a 10-minute ego-boost and then a lifetime of annoying logistics to manage? I mean, what would the villain _do_ with it once they got it? And the quality of a villain is defined by how they answer that very question.

Now, enter the villain Doctor Zin. In the original Jonny Quest cartoon he was, let's face it, basically "Yellow Peril" personified and just about that well thought-out. Why does Zin hate Quest? What does he hope to gain by screwing up Quest's life/inventions/family/reputation? Why is he so motivated and what brought him to villainy? These questions don't have good answers in the original, and TRA didn't add much. We know Zin canonically believes that he is of a superior race of man or something, so that suggests genocide as at least a part of his end-game, but we're still lacking a reason for it (other than, you know, blind bigotry and being a psychopath).

When it became clear to me that Doctor Zin was going to become TTSA's major big bad, I spent about a week being annoyed. Because what was I supposed to do with that? Zin was the perfect antagonist for our crew in every way - he's dedicated, resourceful, definitely evil, powerful, and a little (or a lot) insane - but I couldn't just put him out there as a sickening stereotype of hand-rubbing, cat-petting, cackling evil. Even if his motivations never became known, it was essential that I understand him. Now, as you know, I wrote a plot wherein Zin's actions all tie back to his basic plan to form an army of Sentinels which he could then use to take over the world or run it from the shadows or just, I dunno, lay siege to a tropical spot and live out his life surrounded by loyal Sentinel guards or whatever - in essence, where he could have anything he wanted. But if he succeeded, what _would_ he want?

By the time he's tangling with Benton Quest in the original series, he's already way off the deep end. So I began by asking myself - how did he get there in the first place? Well, say Zin was always a villain in the making, his beginning psyche as a kid with prickly feelings who was belittled or burned or otherwise damaged, leading him to develop into a young adult who seethed to burn down the world and rise up supreme and yadda yadda. It takes a lot to get a guy from a young man angry at the world wanting to smash it down like a toddler throwing a tantrum to the sort of manic, focused effort he displays as a proper villain. And Zin is many things, but he isn't stupid. He knows if he took over the world he'd have to run the thing, and realistically, that may not be as pleasant as it sounds. But Zin is still desperate, still _needs_ all that power. But maybe taking over the world isn't a goal at all.

Which led me to looking back at Zin's historical interactions with the Quests. In the original series, he is everywhere. Seriously. You can't go 4 episodes without tripping over a Zin reference or implication somewhere. And all his take-over-the-world stuff is actually secondary to his single-minded desire to steal things from Benton, screw life up for Benton, etc. Well, why? Why does he hate Doctor Quest so much? Why did he bother?

(It would have been easy for me to jump to the obvious parallel - since Zin has daughters, what happened to their mother and could Benton have been responsible for it just as Zin is to blame for the loss of Rachel Quest? But that didn't ring true to me somehow. (As to how a creep-fest like Zin got with somebody long enough to produce those girls, yeah, those are the wonderings of nightmares and I'm not touching them.))

And then it hit me.

The whole take-over-the-world ploy, which might have been his immature motivator as an angry young man with a tragic, evil backstory, suddenly takes on an entirely different meaning if you look at it as a _means to an end_. Think about it. Every interaction we see in the series with Zin has two goals - power and destroying the Quest family. And Zin counts it a failure if he gets the first but not the second. Power, control, even genocide don't satisfy him. It's Benton Quest he yearns for.

That makes Zin's desire to rule the world secondary, because ruling the world would get him victory over Benton Quest. And doesn't that suggest that Zin's worldview includes Benton basically sitting on top of everything already? Which, let's face it, even back in the original JQ is sort of true, and TRA and then me with TTSA didn't improve things. Benton could run the planet if he put his mind to it. Maybe Zin's _only_ way of defeating Benton _is_ to take the world _away from him_.

So the question becomes - why the obsession with Benton?

Go re-read the scene in Arc 4 where Zin has Benton strung up in chains and then come back. I'll wait.

Back?

I think you can read that scene with a lot of sexual overtones - I wrote it to be ambiguous; and, hey, straight up Zin-has-a-hard-on-for-Benton-but-is-in-violent-denial is a legitimate answer to this whole question. But when you add it to the full library of knowledge about Doctor Zin the character, I think it highlights a much stronger reason behind how and why Zin became the supervillain he is.

Put simply, Zin looks at Quest and sees everything he wants. He sees brilliance, influence, money, power. He sees respect and access and options. He sees a man with the ability to flex his muscles (brain or wealth or connections or otherwise) and change the world. And Zin's only way of dealing with how badly he wants to be there is to step into Benton's skin and claim it for himself. Why does Zin need an army of Sentinels? Because Benton _already has one_. Benton isn't Zin's rival - he's Zin's endgame.

(And, if it warms the evil cockles of your heart to wonder if Zin wouldn't want to take that all the way to owning Benton in a sexually-dominated way, well, I wouldn't rule it out. That's just not something I can write without squicking myself to pieces.)

Zin is obsessed with attaining everything that Benton has. He's Loki from _The Avengers_ ruining Thor's beloved mortal world because it's Thor's. He's Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights taking over first the Earnshaw family and then the Lintons to attain everything for himself and eradicate his rivals. He's Ahab, and Benton is his Great White Whale. But not because of revenge, at least not initially. Now, decades on, maybe that's part of it, too. Maybe by this point Benton and Zin have struck against one another so many times it's inevitable that some of Zin's desire is born from a need for vengeance for all the failures that have come before. But revenge is a secondary or tertiary motivator compared to the initial, most powerful reason of all - Zin wants everything Benton has ever had and will take apart the entire world to achieve it.

In the end, Benton and Zin are kind of photo-negatives of one another. Opposites morally but otherwise almost indistinguishable. Matter and anti-matter. And because of it, because of a lifetime of battle between them, there comes a point when Zin literally cannot stop the war against Benton Quest. Zin literally cannot do anything but come back again and again for Benton and his family and allies because only by having what Benton has can Zin ever truly have succeeded.

Running the world? Meh. Only if it comes with Benton finally where he belongs - broken at the feet of Zin. Because only that will feed the hateful wolf inside Zin's heart. Only that will satisfy a lifetime of hate brewed in envy and twisted admiration and vengeance.

 

  * If That Is True, Why Is Zin Still Alive At The End of Arc 4?



After all that said, this is a legitimate question. And, honestly? The answer is simple: because my beta asked me not to kill him. She argued that Zin didn't deserve to live, not really (I mean, come on. He's done atrocious things.), but that wasn't what mattered. She believes that Zin needs to exist the way shadows do - he's an opposite that makes the world whole. Without light, there is no darkness. Without Zin, Benton loses something of himself. I'm absolutely certain that maybe only Hadji of the five Quests would agree with her, but she asked me for it and I really can't refuse her anything. So Zin lived. Honestly, though, it worked out well because it let Race make an important decision for himself. Sometimes my beta is really, really good at inspiring me.

She wasn't angling for a sequel, I don't think. I hope not. If I wrote one, would Zin be in it? I dunno. Ask me then. Maybe. He _is_ out there, after all...

 

  * The Alternate Arc 4



Almost a year to the day after I had written the first two-thirds of Arc 4, I was sitting around working on an entirely different story when I had a very odd thought:

What would have happened if no one from SELF had gone to the Science Museum in Chapter 2 of Arc 4?

And the answer was intriguing enough that it seems worth sharing. It's actually two answers and one is much simpler than the other. It comes down to a secondary question - do the Sentinels of SELF still storm the museum even without their own Guides and Sentinels included in the hostages inside?

If they did, if teams of Sentinels still went into the museum, maybe led by Jim, maybe not, I think Arc 4 continues apace with only the change that probably a _whole lot more_ people die. The reason for this is that it was only Jim's presence so deep in the building and already listening for Kincaid that warned him about the nasty sound trick Brackett was about to pull, and the fact that he could get a warning to Jessie was all that spared most of the Sentinels from being overtaken as Dmitri was. If a full strike team had been incapacitated, then there would have been a lot more than the small group under Dmitri that were brainwashed in that short time, and therefore a lot more deaths at SELF when they all woke up.

But that's assuming a strike team moved into the museum rather than bow to Kincaid's demands. If, on the other hand, Jim and Blair and Jonny and Hadji and Benton had surrendered, had they played by Kincaid's rules, then I think we have a very, very different Arc 4. Because even if a strike team went in with them or after them, there wouldn't be that warning (so you'd still have the same result as above). However, if Brackett had gotten his hands on Jonny and Jim that early in the story, no warning, no planning, and before Hadji had started exploring inside his own mindscape to prepare for what was to come, I think both Jonny and Jim might well have ended up under Zin's control for real.

That was Zin's original plan, after all - to take Benton's son away before his eyes. I think, if that happened, then after the brainwashing Brackett and Kincaid would release Jim, now totally under their control, with orders to kill Blair as a distraction; no matter how that ended, it wouldn't be clean and it wouldn't be easy for Jim to forgive himself even if Blair took it in stride (and after Alex Barnes, he might not have). And I think Brackett and Kincaid would have been able to escape with Jonny (willingly) and Hadji (unable to leave his brother and therefore a perfect hostage). Hadji might have tried to free Jonny, but Anaya would have gotten a lot more time to taunt him, to try to change his thinking, to manipulate him. Jonny would not have the control Hadji implanted, and more and more secrets of SELF and of Guides and everything else would fall to Zin.

In other words, the deck would have been stacked badly in Zin's favor. And while I am sure our heroes would have found a way to triumph in the end, I think it would have been far more difficult, and far more deadly. Had I written the story that way, I don't think it would be only a few Sentinels and Dmitri and Ivanna who died; I think Simon might have been on the list, too - at Jim's hands, no less - and also possibly Benton Quest himself. And I think many of Zin's Sentinels would have been killed rather than rescued as well.

So no. It wasn't just the premonition about the dinosaur bones that was the reason for our heroes to go to the museum, even if that ended in death. Because if they hadn't been in place to work against Brackett and Kincaid, if plans had gone according to Zin's original intent, there would have been far more dire consequences for far more people - and lasting scars and pains that might never have fully healed.

 

  * Names



Names matter, and when I make up character names, they always have some meaning even if it's only clear to me. I'm a believer in names and in their power. My own given name marks me as a warrior and defender, and I take that quite seriously.

Now, a lot of the names I created for this series - Kaimi Waihee, Leilani Waihee, Eric Faulk, Lai Gardner, Bai Ming, Ivanna Afinogenova, etc. - had as much to do with the culture or ethnic origins as the meaning behind the names. But there is one set of names that has real significance and I want to make sure you caught it.

Arc 4.5:Rekindled introduces the three children of Daryl and Jessie: Aster, Sam, and Rachel. And if you tip your head to the side and squint, you'll see where each name originates. Aster is named for Jessie's mom Estella - both are names to do with the stars (his middle name is Roger for Race). Rachel is named for Benton's late wife, Jonny's mom. And Sam is named for Simon (his middle name is John for Daryl's mom Joan) - both the names Sam and Simon are variations on the Hebrew name for "God has heard."

(And if you were really paying attention in Arc 4 when Incacha shows up, you might have made a guess and you'd be right. Sam is Incacha reincarnated as a Guide, and if I ever did a next generation kind of sequel story, I think Sam would be the one to step up and bond with the Sentinel who will someday win leadership of the Tribe. And Hadji knows that, has known it since long before Sam was born. It's why he takes special care of Sam; he is preparing the one who will rival his own powers as a Guide but also as a Shaman.)

 

  * Death And Remembrance



First of all, a confession: I knew from the moment that I introduced Dmitri and Ivanna way back in the middle of Arc 2 that neither would live to see the end of TTSA, at least not without observing from the Beyond. How did I know? Actually, the answer is rather simple and slightly mercenary. Dmitri and Ivanna represent the old way of Sentinels, the path of Sentinels and Guides for however-many of them had passed through the Soviet system. Even though Dmitri and Ivanna themselves were open to change, were actively engaged in transforming their own perspectives and worldviews to allow the newness brought by Blair and Jim, they were still the old guard. And, frankly, for as long as Ivanna was around, no matter how strong Blair became, he could never fully take his place as the primary Guide for the Tribe. So I knew they would die. It would be a last trial necessary to help propel Jim and Blair all the way to their final destiny at the head of the Tribe (until the time came for the Wheel to turn again and for that path to fall to Jonny and Hadji).

While their deaths came in Arc 4, I was forced to prepare for them much, much earlier than anticipated due to events in my own life. A friend of several years was unexpectedly killed in a road accident at the end of July in 2014. I was mid-way through writing Arc 3 at the time, and I hadn't even yet decided how to resolve the issue of Yuri and Bai Ming. But her death tore a hole in me and while memorial services helped as did our strong choir community remembering her as we continued on together, the resolution I needed could not come from moving on, not right away. First, I needed to finish grieving in my own way. And, as in many things, my own way was through my writing.

Within days of Kim's death, I wrote Ivanna's funeral scene even though I was still in the middle of Arc 3 and hadn't even started Arc 4 yet. I wrote it because I could not see Kim's body, could not put a hand on her skin and know for myself that she was truly gone, and I needed it. I wrote it because my choir community was crying, shocked and hurt and lost at the senselessness of it. I wrote it because I needed someone to take the step forward after allowing me the time in my own sorrow. I needed the pain of the Sentinels who failed to protect her, of the Guides who had lost a wise and kind voice who was one of their own. I needed Jim's familiarity with loss even though he had no idea how to guide a family through the process - as I did not. And, most of all, I needed a parent to let me cry and also remind me to live.

(All that said, when I finally started writing Arc 4 in September 2014 and actually got to the part where Dmitri kills Ivanna so suddenly, so starkly, I almost couldn't go through with it. I spent 2 days dithering on those few terrible lines at the end of that chapter, unable to more forward. And I had to ask not only my beta, but any friend within range if it was okay for me to kill a character, if it was all right, all in spite of the fact that I'd already written her funeral. It _gutted_ me to kill Ivanna. I'd never done it before, never killed a character in a story like that. Turns out I'd need that lesson for some of what I wrote the following spring in a different fandom entirely whose story will go up early in 2016, but still. It _hurt_.)

I...hope you don't see this as something trite. I know Kim would not think I was disrespecting her memory by working through my own feelings and emotions in the creative means most helpful to me. Someone once quoted to me the line that "you write the war of your own time" or something like that, and in this case, I wrote the death that happened in mine. I hope it doesn't seem callous. I miss Kim still. I hear her voice sing with the rest of us every time we perform certain songs that were truly hers. I think Kim would be okay with me memorializing her not just in song, but by finding my own feelings and turning them to another use. Just like we reassigned her solos so the songs could go on, I passed my own grief forward to keep my own creativity alive.

SELF will always remember and love Ivanna and Dmitri and all the others they have lost. And I and Encore and the TCWC will always remember you, Kim. And I know you're watching over us. May love and light hold you in peace.

 

  * Soundtrack Time



One of the things I have learned about myself is that it is virtually impossible for me to write without music. Well, it's virtually impossible for me to do much of _anything_ without music. Writing is like breathing to me - it is a necessity even if it doesn't always come easily - but music is my heart and soul. Many of the stories I've written end up having soundtracks to them that capture in some combination how I feel about the story, what's going on inside it, or the mindset I needed in order to keep everything together. TTSA was no exception to that, though most of the songs ended up being more about The Sentinel than Jonny Quest:TRA. Here are the major songs that led me from Arc 1 to the end of Arc 4.5 and why:

"Through Glass" by Stone Sour - This song is, I think, very nearly perfect for Jim Ellison, particularly before he starts getting comfortable in his own Sentinel skin. He looks at the entire world through the glass of his desire to keep his true feelings protected and apart. And yet there is such need in him to be seen and understood, to be free of the fear that holds him. I think this song is also really appropriate for Jonny and Hadji whenever they are not united, particularly during the bout of Sentinel sickness in Arc 3 and later when Hadji is sort of pulling away from Jonny in Arc 4. That sense of isolation and separation is very real between them, and worse for them because they know what it is like to have one another without glass between them.

"How You Remind Me" by Nickelback - (Yeah, scoff about Nickelback. I don't care.) I love this song as a representation of Jim and Blair and their relationship. "I'm sick of sound without a sense of feeling" anybody? "Living with me must have damn near killed you" sound familiar? Yeah. In the end, Jim and Blair need each other. And their very differences, the things that should divide them, are instead what hold them together and help them find themselves in one another. Sometimes, I think, it is the person who helps remind us who we really are that is the hardest to live with, and the most necessary. This song could also be about Benton and Race, specifically how Benton helps Race be more than a trained killer and how Race helps Benton navigate through his tougher emotions.

"I Will Not Bow" by Breaking Benjamin - Parts of this song are about all our heroes who refuse to give in, who fight to the very last and beyond, who never ever let go of the fight that is before them. But part of it is about those who cannot hold out that long. It's about those who are lost to Sentinel senses before they ever reach SELF. It's about how some of the Sentinels from the Soviet system survived for so long by shutting the world away in necessary paranoia. And, let's face it, there's some evil in this, too, the will and rage of those who want to ruin the world like Zin. It's odd how the same song can be about good, evil, and neither all at the same time. I think that's part of why I liked it so much while navigating through TTSA.

"Bright Lights and Cityscapes" by Sara Bareillis - This song is quite sad, really. Sometimes it makes me cry. Which is probably why I use it so much, actually. When something deep and emotional came up, even something not strictly tragic but at least intensely heartfelt, this is the song I would find to help me keep those emotions strong. I particularly remember the aftermath of Ivanna's death being almost inseparable from this one. But there were happier ones, too. Daryl's slow developing love for Jessie and hers for him comes to mind as well. Ngama and Kaimi's mom's scene beside the pool in Arc 4, also. But the most poignant scene that goes to this song, in my opinion, is the "With Love" oneshot about Blair dealing with his mom. In that case, though, this song would be sung from Jim's perspective, promising Blair he'll be there for him, he'll be his family who loves him, when "she" cannot.

"Aquarius" by Digital Daggers - If you've never heard this version of the song, go look it up on YouTube. Trust me, you will not be sorry. It is INCREDIBLE. It's "Aquarius" in MINOR. It's haunting and beautiful and mysterious and this song more than any other was playing in my headphones on repeat for, eh, the climax of Arc 2, the last half of Arc 3 and 80% of Arc 4. This is the song that captures the magic and power of Sentinels and Guides using their Sixth and Seventh. This is the song that would be in the background of any miraculous moment when particularly Blair and Hadji unite with Jim and Jonny and change the world. Whether it's Jonny and Hadji bonding near Hadji's death, Bai Ming and Yuri saving the Sentinels in the Arctic base, Dmitri finding Hadji when he was lost beyond the Seventh Door, or the huge confrontation with a nuclear facility in full meltdown, this is the song that brought those scenes to life for me.

"Desert Rose" by Sting - This song is hard to explain. It's on every soundtrack to every story I write even if I don't include it in my notes. Not because it's specifically relevant to everything. But because this song, uh...it stirs my creative juices, I guess. If you can imagine the weaving plot-lines and themes and character growth and all the parts of storytelling that have to come together as different threads, this song is the one that makes all those threads unknot themselves for me. If I'm stuck, if I have a block, if I'm feeling uninspired, I put this song on repeat. And it triggers something deep in the back of my brain that allows me to write again, to see all the connections and possibilities I'd missed, to reignite my excitement and my passionate need to continue with the story. Honestly? It's probably because of AMVs. I discovered this song's unique magic in allowing me to shake loose from any hesitation when writing "The Silken Cord," a crossover involving Jonny Quest:TRA and the anime Gundam Wing. It was an entirely accidental discovery made because both shows have really excellent AMVs set to this song: one about Hadji (duh) and one about Quatre Raberba Winner (also duh if you know GW). So I'd listen to the song and mentally interweave the AMVs when I felt frustrated. And somehow that evolved into this song being the key to unlock my brain when I am stuck or uninspired or out of ideas. It's a useful thing. It was even more useful that I discovered a Youtube MV for The Sentinel to this song also!

 

  * I WANT MORE



Also known as the "Will you ever write another sequel?" question.

The answer?

Uh, I dunno.

That's not me being coy or facetious. I literally do not, at this point, know if I'll ever come back to add to TTSA or not. In the past, I've been absolutely certain I'd write a follow-up to a story and haven't yet gotten around to it, or I've not thought I had more to give in a certain series and BOOM another story appears and demands to be written. I think I can't actually say either way if there will ever be more of The Temple Steps Alight. Right now? No. But in a year after I've burned through my other stories and suddenly miss my Chancery crew or the Major Crimes department or my OCs or the idea of spirit animals...who knows? The one thing I have learned is not to promise either way. I just don't know. I'm not ruling it out, but I don't have any plans or ideas right now, either. I did a lot with 4 novels and 14 oneshots. But if an angle occurs to me that I missed, well, we'd have to see. I've had a few thoughts banging around, but nothing concrete enough to make me actually piece together a tale worth the telling. That, however, might be because I'm, as usual, buried under 16 other ideas.

Either way, if you subscribe to the series on AO3, then you'll be sure to find out!

And also? If you have a brilliant idea of something, oneshot or another full-length novel or something in between, share it with me! Maybe it will spark something, shake something lose. Or maybe I'll turn around and tell you that YOU are the one who should write it. Who knows? TTSA was my heart and soul, my labor of a full year (I began it in February 2014 and finished it at the end of October the same year, all 4 Arcs and the oneshots), but that doesn't mean it is only mine anymore. Now it belongs to all of us. Just make sure you ask for my okay before you run off with a part of it, all right?

It's been fun sharing this year with you - watching the pieces develop, sitting in anticipation of revealing the next twist or secret. I hope to see you around my other fandoms, but this one isn't over. The Temple Steps Alight may be marked "complete" but it's never-ending. The Wheel turns. Maybe next will be your hand leading us forward, or giving me a good shove to get things moving again.

I'll leave a candle burning for you all, just in case.


End file.
